Take the opportunity to tell people who are important to you what they mean to you. That is always a good way, but it’s important when death is near, too.
Please don’t be afraid of the person you love when they’re dying. It is often not pretty. It is distressing. But often more so for those around than for the dying person, if she is being kept comfortable and out of pain with medication.
Go into the room and sit with them, hold hands, and tell them about your love and what they’ve meant to you.
And then, get yourself busy. There’s a meal to be cooked, groceries to bring in, laundry to do, breaks to be given to those who’ve been sitting up all night.
There is no grief therapy you can buy that’s better than jumping into the chores, ordinary and out of the ordinary.
A close friend of mine died after 10 years of dealing with parotid gland cancer with resulting disfigurement and miserable life, except she was always so brave. I am happy to say that I did tell her what she meant to me and what our friendship meant to my life. My mom, the same, although she was pretty much demented for several months prior to her death. I am a retired RN and was always appalled at people who sent their loved ones to the hospital to die because they didn’t want them to die at home. It would have been better if they could have just stayed in familiar surroundings. Some died within hours of being admitted.
My mother was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer in March 1990 and died in November of that year. She was given a few rounds of radiation as a palliative measure, and was in remission for two or three months. When she was given the news that the cancer had returned, she told no one. Finally, when her decline could no longer be hidden, she told us the truth and added that she had withheld the information because she had been so saddened by the way everyone had treated her right after her diagnosis. She described it as "everyone treated me as if I was already dead, and the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was cancer. That was the only thing I *didn't* want to talk about." And she was absolutely right. I had done it myself.